Philosophical Foundations of Physics

Get Started Reading Books and Articles on the Cheap

Tired of paying too much for textbooks, books, and articles? Tired of paying anything at all? With a little bit of effort, you can reduce the price of an otherwise expensive book to nothing — or almost nothing.

Reading Legally & Honestly. Before you make that one-click purchase at Amazon.com, consider reading the same book for free, with these completely legal and honest tricks.

Download Public Domain Books At books.googlecom. Before you actually purchase something by Kant, browse over 700 free books by Kant (in various languages and translations). Just make sure you select “Full View” in the dropdown menu, and Google returns only books that are old enough to have been released to the public domain. This trick is very effective, as long as the author you want is already dead.

Download Free Articles from the Author’s Homepage. Did you know that Jeremy Butterfield has dozens of his most recent papers posted on his website? Or that John Norton has written a free introduction to Einstein’s theories? You can always google an author that you’re interested in. Or, cut to the chase and check out this meticulous list of philosophers with online papers, compiled by David Chalmers.

Go to the Library. The what? Yes, the library. It’s still the easiest way to get free books to read. Some libraries will even send books to you in the mail for free. Here’s how to find a public library in your area. Or, visit your local University’s library for an even grander selection.

Buy very, very cheap books. Ok, so this one’s almost free. There are hundreds of books selling at less than 1 cent on Amazon. They’re not all worth a penny, but there are some real jewels among the noise, which you can get for only the price of shipping. To find them, try browsing by subject, and then selecting “Sort by Price: Low to High.”

Reading With Questionable Scruples. Disclaimer: these tricks are intended for legal use and for informational purposes only. Here are more ways to read on the cheap, which may require questionable scruples.

Scan Books. With a little practice and a decent scanner, you can scan a 500-page textbook into PDF form in about 45 minutes. It’s a good idea to work out a system in which you scan/flip/scan/flip… as quickly as possible.

Finally, if you’re too lazy to do all this yourself, you can just have the whole job done at FedEx or the UPS Store. Tell them what you want printed, and ask for a spiral binding job. The price should still be less than $20 per textbook.

Both volumes of Bratteli and Robinson’s famous Operator Algebras and Quantum Statistical Mechanics are available for free on Bratteli’s website. (Free is better than buying them for $100 apiece on Amazon, isn’t it?)